Cloud Tea Monkeys

Product Information

Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments Rosoff, Meg. "Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet – review". The Guardian. 11 June 2011. Retrieved 5 July 2011.

Cloud Tea Monkeys (Ragged Bears, 1999), written by Elspeth Graham and Mal Peet, illustrated by Alan Marks — "based on a Chinese folktale" [8] ISBN 9781406333862 (pbk) The stunning word pictures created by the two authors are beautifully partnered with glorious illustration. This story begs to be read aloud as there is such a musicality to the text. Highly recommended “ Three of Peet's books feature the fictional South American sports journalist Paul Faustino (and football). Peet's debut novel Keeper, which is primarily a world-champion goalkeeper's life story in the course of an interview. Keeper, The Penalty, and Exposure all feature Faustino and South American football players. When he won the 2009 Guardian Award for the Othello-based Exposure, he told the sponsoring newspaper he had felt that 'football books for children were "pretty much hey"'. Also, "I used to play all the time. I would play football when it was light and read when it was dark. Now I get to play football vicariously." [7]Beautiful though Juan Wijngaard’s vibrant illustrations are, Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham tell the story of Cloud Tea Monkeys so vividly that it could stand on its own.” Five children from different countries show us who they love and how to say 'I love you' in their own languages. A stylish interactive board book that's fun for pre-schoolers and older children. a b c "Mal Peet wins Guardian children's fiction prize: A version of Othello which casts the Moor of Venice as a South American football star wins Mal Peet the 2009 Guardian children's fiction prize". Alison Flood. The Guardian, 8 October 2009. Retrieved 16 June 2012.

KS1 would benefit from having the story read to them and the beautiful illustrations on a visualiser or interactive whiteboard. the story and illustrations would engross capture the children's attention and imagination, whilst also providing some insight into another culture and way of life. These lessons are based on Cloud Tea Monkeys by Elspeth Graham, available to buy now from our Bookshop store: Further ideas that would be incorporated using a cross curricular approach include the idea of using Science alongside Literacy. Perhaps for a more hands on approach to learning children may explore the process involved in making tea and then have the opportunity to taste and smell it. They could then produce a piece of writing which explores the use of instructional writing on how to make tea. One further subject that I had in mind was Art due to the brilliant illustrations used throughout the book. Children could use the illustrations to inspire their own artistic creativity, perhaps exploring the effective use of colour to create light and dark features to their own pieces of art. Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear. Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners". The Guardian 12 March 2001. Retrieved 8 August 2012.The quality of the book itself is great with very detailed and picturesque scenery that would impress any primary aged child. Our Cloud Tea Monkeys KS2 teaching resource (made up of an editable 90-slide PowerPoint presentation with 20 accompanying worksheets) is based on the book by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham. This 'Cloud Tea Monkeys' unit ofwork covers a variety of essential KS2 Reading and Writing skills and is both progressive and engaging. This three-week Writing Root begins with the arrival of a Royal Tea –Taster in class seeking apprentice tea-tasters. The children experience an immersive session where they smell and taste a range of different teas before creating descriptive statements to describe a tea. A basket is then delivered and inside is a magical and moving story about Cloud Tea and how monkeys save a young girl and her mother. As the text is read, the children are exposed to range of language activities to stimulate grammatical development and reading comprehension skills. The children then write letters of thanks to the monkeys. Using the authors’ note as further stimulus, children research, plan and then write a non-chronological report on tea, the tea-trade and traditions relating to tea. Synopsis of Text: understand what they read, in books they can read independently, by: predicting what might happen from details stated and implied Peet himself stated, "I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subverted or used to disguise the author’s intent. My own way of doing this is to attempt a sort of whimsical alchemy, whereby seemingly incompatible genres are brought into unlikely partnerships." [9]